


Side Effects May Vary

by Lady Divine Coldflash (fhartz91)



Series: Would You, Could You [9]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Len protects his sister, Lewis is a sadist, M/M, Mention of Past Violence, Prescription Drugs, Romance, and only Barry can help, mention of nausea and vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine%20Coldflash
Summary: After pulling a job with his father, Len returns home, eager to go to his room and text his boyfriend.But Len's father has other plans...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm sorry it took a while to post another installment of this. It's not over. There are many other chapters already close to being finished, so if you enjoy this series, and I hope you do, you can look forward to more in the near future :)

“You were really on the ball tonight, kid,” Lewis says, clapping his son on the shoulder. Len grins and nods, pretending to be pleased, but if he could get away with it, he’d spit in the ridiculous motherfucker’s face. His stupid old man, acting all buddy-buddy like this is _normal_ , as if busting into houses together was something other fathers and sons did. _It’s probably the chemicals gettin’ to him,_ Len thinks. They did manage to pull off the near impossible though – cleaned out a house at the end of a busy cul-de-sac in the middle of the afternoon. Len’s father had gotten savvy to a new scam – breaking in to houses tented for fumigation. Len thinks his dad got the idea off of some cable TV show. Well, wherever he got it from, with a few spare hands, some _newly acquired_ Terminix uniforms, and a couple of industrial strength gas masks, they loaded two vans in under an hour, with next door neighbors home and everything, and got away clean. “Got through that security system in record time. Ha…I’m actually proud of you.” Lewis’s tommy gun laugh is incredulous, as if of all the improbable things in the world, he didn’t think that being proud of his son was possible.

“Thanks, Dad.” Len does his best to sound sincere, but his father’s praise means nothing to him. There was a time when Len _wanted_ his father to be proud of him, but even back then, when Len was young and impressionable and could probably be tricked into believing his father cared about him, Len’s desire for approval was a matter of self-preservation. Len thought that if he could shave time off picking a lock, bypassing a security system, or shutting down an alarm, then things would get better at home. But they didn’t, because Len was never good enough. Even if he did better than men five times his age, who had been in the business decades longer, it still wasn’t up to muster for Lewis Snart.

So right now, Len doesn’t give a shit what his father thinks. He’s biding his time, doing what he’s told until he can figure out a way to get Lisa away from this psycho, and out of his life for good. Len has been taking steps, making preparations bit by bit. He has bags packed for both of them, stowed away in his gym locker at school, along with a small stockpile of non-perishable food, enough to get them by on the run for a couple of days. He has a lead on a guy who can get them a getaway car and possibly act as driver…once he gets his ass out of juvie. He saves every spare cent he can, from recycling mostly and from odd jobs because his father doesn’t give them much of anything, but he also finds a way to swipe a little on every take. His father is a highly suspicious man, but if a few dimes go missing here and there, he’s more likely to blame the loss on a sticky fingered associate than on Len.

Lewis doesn’t care a thing for Len but what he can get out of him, doesn’t respect him as far as he can throw him, but he trusts him, and even then only because he trusts his own methods. In Lewis’s life he’s learned that fear is a great motivator. As far as he’s concerned, he has put the fear of God into his children. They’ll do whatever he says, with a smile on their faces if he tells them to.

Lewis shoves in front of his son, opens the front door of their house, and walks inside. Len follows him in, locking up behind. He assumes that his old man will stop by the fridge for a six-pack of Coors and then trundle off to bed to celebrate his success.

 _His_ , not Len’s, because in Lewis’s mind, Len wouldn’t be half as good at his job without his father’s training.

After his dad tucks himself in for the night, Len can go up to his own room and text Barry. He hasn’t seen his boyfriend in hours, not since Len’s dad showed up unexpectedly during lunch and made Len miss his last few classes of the day. Len misses Barry, as weak sauce as that may sound to some people. Len didn’t see himself turning into the kind of guy who’d miss his boyfriend after only an afternoon away, but there he is, grinding the palms of his hands into meatloaf with his nails, waiting for his dad to hit the hay so he has the chance to hear all about Barry’s lame day – how he aced his chem test, what annoying thing Iris did, what embarrassing thing Joe said...if any knuckleheads tried to mess with him. Barry won’t own up at first, but Len will get it out of him. And then he’ll start a hit list. He won’t beat anybody up. Aside from not needing that kind of heat, he’d promised Barry he wouldn’t. Len will find some other way to fuck with them – pour molasses in their backpack, trip them down the hall, put a dead fish in their locker. Len wasn’t originally fond of these methods to begin with. They required him to be more creative than usual. But he has to admit, there’s a certain exhilarating level of satisfaction to seeing someone who has the nerve to mess with his Barry reach into their book bag and pull out a math text book covered in sticky brown glop.

Before dating Barry, Len would have gone for a run after a job and then called it a night. But now that Len has him, he’s excited about something in his life. He actually looks forward to waking up in the morning, even if the bulk of his day remains the same – same boring school, same obnoxious teammates…same asshole father.

Barry gives Len something besides running away from this frickin’ maniac’s house and never looking back to look forward to…even if it comes with the knowledge that someday, someday _soon_ , he might be leaving Barry behind, too. But Len had decided from the day he told Barry Allen that he could have him that he wouldn’t think about that. Of all the plans Len has made in his life, things he’s worked out to the last detail, he’s decided to let fate handle his relationship with Barry.

And he has to say, so far, so good.

Lewis saunters toward the kitchen, yawning and stretching as if he can’t wait to get to bed, but when he reaches the foot of the staircase, he stops. One hand resting on the banister, he looks upstairs as if he’s contemplating between grabbing his beer or just heading straight to bed. Len is personally hoping he chooses the beer, since drunk Lewis Snart tends to sleep deeper…and later.

 _Come on, come on, come on,_ Len chants in his head, wondering what the hell his old man is waiting for. _Just go to bed already. Get your fucking beer and go to bed. Drink your ass to sleep so I can talk to Barry and get a few hours’ peace._

“Why don’t you go get your sister?” Lewis suggests suddenly, his eyes fixed on the dark upper level.

Stunned by that request, Len gawks at his father. His eyes open a little too wide, he pauses a little too long. It’s subtle, but his father is a master at detecting subtle.

In that single second, Len has blown it.

“Why?” Len recovers, but unfortunately not fast enough.

“What? I need a reason to see my daughter?” Lewis asks, wearing a smile that Len can’t stand. It’s two parts Cheshire, three parts jackal, and five parts pure conniving asshole. “I could always go get her myself if it’s too much of a problem for you.”

Len feels his insides unravel. He has less than half a second to put all of his pieces back into place. Impassive face. Unreadable tone. A mask of total indifference. Come up with a plan, do it quickly. No need to figure out his dad’s machinations; Len knows they can’t be good. Lisa. Where is Lisa? Is she even home? She’d mentioned stopping by her friend Molly’s house after she got out of school, seeing as Len and his dad would be out for the evening. He didn’t see Lisa’s shoes when they walked in, sitting by the front door where she kicks them off, or her jacket on the hook. She’s probably not even there. _Relax, Len. Stop giving yourself away._ “No...” _Walk to the staircase. Walk, don’t run…_ “That’s alright.” _Please be at Molly’s, Lisa. Please be at Molly’s…_ “I’ll go get her. It’s not a problem.”

When his hand hits the railing, he wants to bolt up the stairs, grab his sister, and find somewhere to hide, but he slows his pace, one foot after the other, trying to appear unfazed. But in his head, he’s begging - _Please be at Molly’s. Please be at Molly’s. Please be at Molly’s._ Len knows his dad’s eyes are on him. And he knows his dad knows he’s scared. Whatever Lewis has planned for the evening, it starts here. Watching Len’s internal freak-out is part of his fun.

Len reaches the top of the stairs, walks five steps to the right, and knocks on his sister’s door, loudly so his father will know he’s following orders. He uses their special knock – two short raps, three long ones, a pause, and then one short – so that Lisa will know before the door opens that there’s trouble.

“Lees? Lees, are you in there?” He knocks one more time. “Dad wants to talk to you.” Silence is his answer, and his speeding heart winds down, relieved when she doesn’t come to the door. She’s not there. She’s over at Molly’s, and for now, she’s safe.

Len can’t say the same about himself, but that doesn’t matter. Whatever comes his way, he can handle it. He can handle his dad…mostly.

Lewis Snart has become strangely sadistic in his old age.

“Come on, Len,” Lewis calls from downstairs. “I don’t have all night.”

“I don’t think she’s here,” Len announces, hoping that by saying it out loud he can cement it, make it true. But it _is_ true. It has to be, or she’d have said something by now. He presses his ear to the door. He doesn’t hear that Top 40 crap she plays, doesn’t hear her talking on the phone. He’s sure he doesn’t see a light on under the door. He bends over slightly to double-check.

Nope. No light.

“Well, open the door and check then.”

His father sounds insistent.

Len swallows hard.

“Alright. Give me a sec.” He opens the door, inch by inch, scanning the floor, convinced that Lisa is in the clear, that he won’t see…

…her knee-high bedazzled black Converse, the pair Len swiped her for Christmas last year, the pair that Len knows for a fact she was wearing today, leaning against her backpack next to her desk.

_Shit!_

Len opens the door further, praying that he’s wrong, that she was wearing a different pair of shoes, or maybe that she stopped off at home first to dump her stuff and change before heading out again, but no. He’s not going to get that lucky. He finds his sister lying in bed, asleep in the dark, her earbuds in her ears, listening to her mp3 player.

_Fuck!_

Change of plans. Len has to think fast. He has to come up with a way to get her out of here before his father comes upstairs to give Len a helping hand.

Len closes the door behind him and turns on the light. He yanks the earbuds out of Lisa’s ears and gives her a shake.

“Lisa!” he says in a low voice so as not to attract too much attention from downstairs. “Lisa, you have to get up. You have to get up _now_.”

Len’s urgent tone doesn’t quite get through to groggy Lisa, who opens her eyes slowly, blinking in confusion.

“Hey, Len,” she says at almost half-speed. “You guys are back early.”

“Yeah, we are.” Len grabs his sister’s jacket and a different pair of sneakers – a pair that don’t lace up to her knees and with a sole that she can run in. “I thought you were going to Molly’s.”

“Well,” Lisa groans, sitting upright and watching her brother ransack her room with more interest than concern, “my period came early, and I’ve got some monster cramps, so I thought I’d take advantage of an empty house and suffer at home.”

“TMI, Lees,” Len grumbles in disgust regardless of his anxiety-fueled episode. “Don’t chicks bond over stuff like that? You guys could be baking brownies, braiding each other’s hair, talking about tampon preferences...”

“Uh, no. Maybe other chicks, but not me. And when have you ever cared about TMI, Captain ODP?” Lisa giggles, but when Len doesn’t immediately clap back, she begins to realize that something is seriously not right. “Len…what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Listen, I need you to go… _now_.” Len kneels at his sister’s feet and starts putting on her sneakers. “I need you to get to Barry’s house and stay there, no matter what. I’ll meet you there later.” He throws that last part in as an afterthought when, in reality, he has no idea what’s going to happen to him after his sister leaves. At the very least, his dad will knock him over the head with a beer bottle if he finds out Lisa was there and Len helped her escape.

“Why do you want me to go…?”

“Tell them… _grrr_ …” he cuts in. His fingers trip over one of her laces, accidentally wrapping it around his knuckle. He throws a knot in it, constructs a lopsided bow, and moves on to the next shoelace. “I don’t know. Tell them that…oh, you’ll think of something! I just need you to get there and stay there!”

“W-why?” she stutters, becoming anxious that her cool-as-a-cucumber older brother is getting her dressed and ready to run out the door…or more than likely the window. “What’s up?”

“I…I don’t know. Everything went down easy, we got what we went in for, in and out slick, but while we were robbin’ the place…I don’t know.” He helps her into her jacket as certain events from their job this afternoon, out-of-place events, start gathering in his mind. “He started grabbing all sorts of random shit out of the medicine cabinet, like prescription meds, you know? He didn’t take the bottles, just the pills. It didn’t dawn on me to wonder why. I thought he was plannin’ on junking up later when he was alone. But he asked me to come get you, and I don’t like the sound of it. So I need you to go.”

“Oh…” Lisa says, her voice shrinking, her insides turning to jelly. “O-okay. Okay.”

Len normally counts off seconds in his head when he’s in a rush – a habit he picked up while breaking into houses since most security systems give you a short window of time for punching in the disarm code. It’s somewhere between ten seconds and thirty depending on the alarm. Len always shoots for seven – better to err on the safe side. He wanted to have his sister out in twenty at the most, but in his haste to get Lisa rolling, he’d stopped counting. Sixty-five seconds had passed between Len getting her up and then getting her dressed. With the door closed, they missed the creak of the stairs as Lewis climbed up, missed the footsteps on the landing, didn’t hear the doorknob turn. When the door swings open, Lisa yelps. Len doesn’t have to see his father standing behind him to know he’s there. He lurches up and shoots over a foot, trying not to appear unhinged, but also careful not to put too much distance between himself and a half-dressed Lisa.

Lisa rises from the bed, not entirely aware of how she looks or what she’s supposed to say. Len didn’t get that far. She has no idea what she was going to claim she was doing if they got caught.

Len is so good at this, they rarely get caught.

“Hey, Lisa.” Lewis doesn’t address his son standing stock still, plans switching in his head like the pages of a flip book as he tries to figure out what to do next. He entertains the idea of tackling the man to the floor and making a run for it, but that didn’t work out all too well the first time he tried it.

That’s how he got his left wrist broken the third time.

“H-hey, Dad,” Lisa says. “I…I didn’t know you guys got back.”

Lisa’s eyes dart over to Len, looking for some sign that her response was okay, but his expression doesn’t change. His eyes, locked on to his father’s face, don’t lose their focus.

“I sent your brother up here to get you…” Lewis smirks, tossing a side-eye glance at his disobedient son, “but it looks like he’s been dillydallying. What you been up to, Lisa?” He gives his daughter’s appearance a once over. “It looks like you might be…going out?”

It’s not really a question. Lewis knows what his children were doing; his naïve son, always playing his sister’s savior. Lewis had betted on it. That’s why he took his sweet time getting up there. He wanted to give them the impression that they had a chance of making it.

“N-no,” Lisa says quickly, forgetting for a second that she’s wearing her sneakers, and her jacket thrown over one arm. But the amused smile growing on her dad’s face brings it all back. “I-I mean, yes. Yes, I was gonna, you know, take a walk around the block. Get some fresh air. I’m not feelin’ too well. I thought it would help.” She tacks that part on in a desperate attempt to get some kind of sympathy from her dad. Maybe if he knows she’s sick, he’ll change his mind about whatever it is he has planned.

“Oh, well, that makes sense.”

Lisa looks to Len for help. Len only briefly glances at her. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off his dad, not for one second. His dad shifts his attention to his own filthy, steel-toed shoes, and for a moment, Len doesn’t know whether or not he bought Lisa’s excuse. But whether he did or not, Lewis Snart rarely ever diverts from a plan. When his father’s smile doesn’t change, Len realizes _no_. He didn’t buy it. Not with that Cheshire/jackal/asshole grin still on his face he didn’t.

Lewis slips a hand into his pants pocket and fishes around. Len holds his breath. Lisa’s knees wobble, nearly sending her dropping back to her mattress. Both siblings stare unblinking at their father as Lewis pulls his closed fist out of his pocket. He takes a step forward. Lisa wants to take a step back, but with her bed behind her, there’s nowhere for her to go. Lewis extends his hand, making a motion for her to do the same.

“Take these.”

Lisa holds out her hand to catch the pills falling out of her father’s fist. She doesn’t know what they are, but she has a feeling that if a one of them lands on the floor, she’ll pay for losing it.

“W-why?” she asks, staring at the pills with wary eyes. They’re all different sizes and shapes, most of them white, a few of them with numbers and letters etched into them. “Wh-what do I need these for?”

“Well, since your brother did such an _exceptional_ job today” - He aims a sarcastically satisfied smile Len’s way - “we got home earlier than planned. And I’m bored. So take those.”

So, that bullshit from earlier about being proud of Len was all an act. What’s going on now, whatever happens to Lisa after she takes those pills, he’s putting it on Len. Lisa has to take them because _Len_ did a good job. Because _Len_ toed the line and got them home early.

Len bites his teeth together to keep from calling his father a bastard to his face. He’s surprised that he’s surprised.

“B-but…but why?” Lisa asks, frightened and confused, her hand holding the pills starting to shake.

Lewis shrugs. “I wanna see what they do.”

Lisa shakes her head no. She wouldn’t dare defy her father under normal circumstances, but it’s uncontrollable. “B-but, I don’t…I don’t want to…”

It takes only a split second for Lewis’s smile to disappear. His blue eyes become hard, his jaw clamping tight around grating teeth. In two strides, he traps her against her bed frame, legs sandwiched between it and her father’s body, wedged painfully. She turns her head and whimpers, her father’s face sickeningly close.

“I said… _take ‘em_!” he growls, hot breath and angry teeth scraping against her cheek.

“Jesus Christ, old man!” Len leaps forward and grabs the pills out of his sister’s hand, eleven in all, his father’s eyes tracking his every move. Len stuffs the pills in his mouth and swallows them dry. He holds his hand up, open palm empty. He opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue so his father can see they’re gone. “There. Alright? _I_ took ‘em. They’re gone.” Lisa stares at her brother, face flushed in fear of her father now pale. “No big deal,” Len says for her benefit. “They’re probably just aspirin or vitamins…or birth control pills.”

Lewis stares blankly at his son, bordering on furious. Then…his lips twitch, and he snickers, the thought that his teenage son downed a handful of estrogen-laden contraceptives apparently more amusing than his anger at Len scotching his fun.

“Those fucking things are full of girl hormones,” Lewis chuckles, backing away from Lisa and the bed. “You’re gonna get moody…and weepy...” He guffaws loudly, getting the words out in between. “Don’t you go gettin’ mad at me if you start growing breasts, boy.” Lewis throws his head back and laughs.

“Yeah.” Len sneers at his father as he turns to leave the room. “Good one, _Dad_.”

Lewis shakes his head, mumbling something about Len turning into a young woman and borrowing his sister’s clothes, as he heads for the door. “Oh, and if I hear you toss your cookies, I’m fishin’ those pills out of the toilet…and she’s takin’ them. End of discussion.” Lewis roars harder, but at which image - Len developing boobs or Lisa eating out of the toilet - Len doesn’t venture to guess. He’s just glad the man is gone, leaving them in peace.

Even if Len’s stomach is parkouring inside his abdomen and his head feels too tight for his skull.

Len feels Lisa grab his hand and squeeze tight.

“Len?” Lisa hisses. “Len, what do we do?”

Len doesn’t know what to tell her. He can’t think straight, and when did her room get so damn warm? He feels woozy, but he’s sure that’s his adrenaline levels crashing. He wants to sit down, but if he sits down, he’ll go to sleep. _But if he puts his head down for a few hours_ , he argues with himself, _then he should be fine_. But he can’t risk going to sleep. Not only does he need to keep an eye out for Lisa, if any one of those were sleeping pills, he’ll need to stay awake. If he vomits in his sleep, he’s done for. And _she’s_ done for. But he can’t let her know. He needs to be strong. If there was ever a time, now is it. “I guess we wait it out.”

“What if those pills make you sick, Lenny? I mean, like, really _really_ sick? You know he’s not gonna get you any help.”

“I don’t know,” Len says, faking calm. He’d considered that, but hearing Lisa’s panicked voice say it out loud makes his head spin. Or the heat in the room is making his head spin. He doesn’t know which. “But I guess we’re gonna find out.”

***

Lisa lies in bed, fully clothed, pretending to be asleep. She had abandoned her earbuds and mp3 player, and stares at her locked door, keeping guard while she waits for morning to come. Len had lumbered off to his room to deal with the potential side effects of the drugs he took. She’d thought that maybe he’d try to figure out a way of throwing them up without their father finding out. She’s been hearing footsteps wandering up and down the hall outside her door – heavy, stumbling footsteps that could be her brother trying to work the drugs through his system.

But they had stopped once in front of her room and tried the doorknob before shuffling away, and she realized they were more likely her dad checking in on her brother, to see what those pills did to him…and then on her.

She’d heard the TV on in the living room, then the front door open and close. The house had gone completely quiet about an hour or so after that. No more footsteps, not a sound from her dad…and not a peep from Len.

If something had happened to him, she wouldn’t know till morning.

She was too scared to leave her room and check on him on the off chance she’d run into her dad making his rounds…

…or simply lingering in the hallway, waiting for her to come out the way a cat waits outside a hole in the wall to catch a mouse.

Shortly after midnight, the _scratch-scratch-scratching_ of fingernails on Lisa’s door fills her with dread. She stuffs the edge of her comforter in her mouth and bites down to keep from making a sound. If her dad thinks she’s asleep, he’ll usually get bored knocking and wander off. _Usually_. On the nights he doesn’t, she has Len to look after her, but she hasn’t heard from Len for a while now. What if those pills were knock-out drugs and he’s down for the night? What if her father had planned it that way, knowing that Len would jump on the grenade for her with those pills? Then her father could barge into her room and do anything he wanted to her. When she was younger, he’d just hit her. But she’s older, more developed, and those unsettling sideways looks he gives her every now and then, the ones she knows are inappropriate for a father to give his daughter…

…the thought of what those looks mean petrifies her more than taking those pills did.

If she’d taken the pills, she’d be asleep when her father tries to violate her.

She hears another scratch-scratch. Her body trembles violently, her teeth chattering in her skull, like dice rolling around her head. Her body seizes up, everything from her scalp to her feet awash with ice cold terror. She can’t move this way, can’t defend herself this way. All she can see herself doing is crying, and she can’t do that.

If she cries, things could get worse.

“L-Lisa?” A reedy voice, no louder than the breeze outside her window upsetting the leaves, whispers through the door, followed by a sniff…and then a whimper. “L-Lisa? A-are you…a-awake?”

She sits up, straining to keep the bed springs from creaking, the possibility of her father lurking close by with his ears peeled still a viable fear. The voice she hears (or _thinks_ she hears; it’s so quiet, she can hardly tell that it _is_ a voice), is barely more than a gravelly mewl of pain that she identifies as belonging to her brother. She’s never heard him this sick in her life, even with broken bones and a concussion.

As far as Lisa has always been concerned, Len is indestructible.

But with his sharp gasps and staccato moans, he sounds like a ghost haunting the hall. She almost doesn’t want to open the door and see for herself what happened to him, but she makes herself stand up. Whatever he’s going through, he did this for her. He does everything for her, sacrifices everything for her, takes the brunt of the beatings and the bruises for her. She’s not going to leave him out in the hallway, vulnerable, to suffer alone.

“I’m coming, Len,” she whisper-yells, hurrying to the door to unlock it. “Just hold on. I’m coming…“ When she opens her door, she expects to stand eye to eye with her brother, but she’s not. He’s hunched over, leaning fully against the door frame, the wood lending him strength since he has none. His head is sweating, but he’s shivering as if he’s freezing. He can’t seem to lift his head, but he manages to raise his eyes. They’re bloodshot and black, his sea blue irises nowhere to be seen in the faint light of the hallway.

“Len! Oh my God! Len!” She tries to help her brother to his feet, but she can’t. He’s too heavy for her to lift, and as far as his own energy is concerned, it looks as if he used the last of it to get to her door. “How can I help you? What do you want me to do, Lenny?”

“We’ve gotta… we’ve gotta go,” he mutters, each word a hindrance, his tongue scraping against them like sand stuck in thick layers to the roof of his mouth, “go get help…”

“But…where, Len? If I take you to the hospital, Dad’s gonna…”

Len shakes his head. “No. No hos…no hospitals.”

“Then…who?” Lisa begs, on the verge of tears. “Who’s gonna help us?”

Len finally tilts his whole head up to look at her, and when he does, Lisa wishes he hadn’t. His skin is white, every vein standing out blue against it; his lips, trying their hardest to form words, a stark, nausea green. He can’t seem to stop moving, stop shaking, stop twitching, but he can’t even stand on his own two feet. Seeing him this way zaps her of her courage. How can she do this? How can she help him? She can’t. She’s not like Len. She needs to find someone who is, or someone who’s close, but where is she going to find someone like that?

Using an ounce of determination, since he has no strength left, he takes her hand. “B-Barry. I need…I need…Barry…Allen…”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Barry!” _Knock-knock-knock!_ “Barry! Open, the door!” _Knock-knock!_ “ _Mmmf_! Barry…Barry, _please_! Hurry!” _Knock-knock-knock!_

“I’m coming! I’m coming! Hold on one second!” Barry yells, racing downstairs from his room to the front door. He’d been waiting all night to hear from Len, who had been whisked away mysteriously by his father during lunch period, the man storming on to campus as if he had a vendetta to satisfy. Since Len and Barry have a rule about no PDA on school grounds, no letting anyone who doesn’t know about their relationship in on the secret, Len’s father didn’t catch him and Barry doing anything more scandalous than eating lunch with Lisa and Iris. Barry and Len _were_ sitting close together, but that was countered by the fact that Len had Barry in a headlock, and was attempting to unload a small bowl of peaches down the front of Barry’s shirt.

Barry didn’t exactly look forward to feeling sticky for the rest of the afternoon, but this one time he didn’t mind. Running to the locker room to clean up would get him a pass out of the first ten minutes of home ec, the one class Barry hates more than anything. He can appreciate the science behind cooking, the chemistry of combining constituents in the creation of a heterogeneous mixture, and the thermodynamics involved by means of conduction, convection, radiation, excitation, or induction in the transformation of said mixture into an entirely new structural entity, but seeing as they hadn’t done anything more challenging than learn how to properly fold an egg in weeks, he’d rather pass. He’d transfer to shop class if he could. That way he could spend his last period of the day with Len.

Well, _most of the wrestling team_ and Len.

Barry had been avoiding those guys at every turn after that stupid virgin roundup party, but it would be worth having to sit in the same (supervised) classroom with them in order to spend an extra 50 minutes of the day with his boyfriend.

But it was too late in the semester for that.

Len hadn’t been trying all that hard during their impromptu wrestling match to douse him. He seemed to enjoy having Barry wriggling and complaining in his embrace. But he’d promised Barry that if he _did_ manage to get him messed up, he’d find a way to clean whatever Barry couldn’t reach later on when they were alone.

How he’d whispered it in his ear, with the faintest dart of his tongue circling the shell of Barry’s ear, left Barry imagining the most sensual ways Len might complete that task.

Barry was more than fine with those terms.

Len didn’t succeed in his goal, stopping short the second he heard his father call his name. Lewis’s voice yelling, “Len!” hit the air like a stick of dynamite exploding, and stopped all four laughing kids in their tracks, along with a handful of other students who had been watching the tussle between Len and Barry in the far quad.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm comin’,” Len had grumbled, shoving Barry away for show, then adding a menacing sounding, “We’ll be continuing this later, _Allen_ ,” accompanied by the most covert of winks he could muster.

If that was meant to make Barry feel better about him leaving, it didn’t do the trick.

Watching Len go bothered Barry. He could tell that Len hadn’t been expecting his dad to show up, but the way he took off without question made it seem like Len knew why he was there. Len hunched in on himself the second he fell in step with his father. Barry couldn’t shake the feeling that Len didn’t want to go, and not because he didn’t want to miss his classes. Not even because he would miss hanging out with Barry.

Len didn’t want to be alone with his dad, which was a given, but today was somehow different. That along with the apprehensive look on Lisa’s face when Len got into his father’s car and drove away, coupled with his lack of a text message later on to tell Barry he was alright, had planted an unshakable fear in Barry’s mind.

A fear for his boyfriend’s safety.

A fear so powerful, it kept Barry from going camping with Joe and Iris for the weekend, just in case.

Barry hadn’t gotten a single text from anybody over the past few hours except Iris telling him that she and Joe were at the campsite, having a blast, and too bad he couldn’t make it. (Barry had claimed to have a massive stomachache, and an art project due Monday that was worth a third of his semester grade. That was only a partial lie. The project isn’t due for another two weeks, but his stomach _was_ so tied up in knots and pummeled by the incessant beating of panicky butterfly wings, he felt like throwing up every time he thought about Len.) Iris also sent along some pictures to prove what a fabulous time they were having, adding that Joe offered to come back home and get Barry after breakfast if he changed his mind. Barry texted that he’d see how he was feeling in the morning and let them know. It was tempting to just say _yes_. Barry hated missing out, especially since these opportunities for weekends away with Joe haven’t come along too often lately. But regardless, he feels he made the right decision. If he had left without hearing a word from Len and anything had happened to him, there would be no way Barry could forgive himself.

Barry lay in bed reading comic books with his phone beside his ear, waiting for a text, or better yet, a call. He tried to relax, take his mind off Lewis’s voice bellowing Len’s name as if he were calling a disobedient dog; his boyfriend’s bowed back as he walked away, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hitched up and folded forward to protect himself, like the wall around a citadel; and the look on Lisa’s face, like she simultaneously wanted to race after the car speeding away with her brother in the back seat, and scream out for help with every breath in her lungs.

Barry had organized and stacked his comics into two columns – one for DC, and the other Marvel – with twenty comics in each column. He was completely through the DC column and halfway through the Marvel when he got another text. At this point, he assumed it was from Iris, gloating about how she and her father were telling early morning ghost stories by the fire and eating s’mores in another attempt to persuade him, so he didn’t rush to read it. But three more came in in close conjunction, which seemed excessive, even for Iris, and fear stirred up in his stomach again, twisting like a faulty parachute and bringing dormant butterflies back to life.

The texts, received at around one in the morning, were from Lisa Snart. Barry rarely gets texts from Lisa, not ones directed to him specifically. Barry tends to get lumped in with group texts that Lisa sends to Iris, discussing plans for study groups, dinner, or weekend makeovers, and mostly because she forgets that his number is on the list somewhere. But these texts were for him alone. They were all identical, the same one sent four times…and the message was alarming.

_Me an Len r a blcok aay. Opn do or. Help!!_

The message was choppy, a few of the words mangled, but none of that mattered. Lisa and Len were on their way to his house…and they needed help.

“Barry? _Mmmf_ …Barry? Please, open the door!”

“I am, I am, I...” Barry throws open the door, expecting Len and Lisa to rush in, but in a bizarre twist, it actually seems like the world stutters for a second, as if the past few minutes were a record playing on a turntable and someone just pulled the arm off the LP, scratching the surface. The pair standing at the door don’t make sense. Barry sees Lisa standing upright with a right lean, but Len is a bundle of human at her side, half struggling to stand, half melting into the ground. “Lisa…what happened…?”

“Are Joe and Iris here?” Lisa asks, nervously peeking around.

“N-no,” Barry replies, Lisa’s question plucking him from his daze. “They…they went out. I played sick. They shouldn’t be home till Sunday.”

Lisa exhales in relief. She crouches to hoist Len up higher in an effort to walk him in, but Len slides out of her grip and falls to the floor. Barry lunges for Len, attempting to catch him before he hits the floor. Horror-stricken, Barry is almost afraid to touch his boyfriend, bent over double on his knees, moaning in agony, with a whine at the tail end of each long utterance that sounds like the beginning of the end.

“Len!” Lisa cries. “Oh my God! Len!”

“Let’s get him to the bathroom quick!”

Barry takes up Len’s left side and leads Lisa, hunkered under Len’s right, down the hall to the downstairs bathroom. They get him as far as the door before he crumbles to the tile, and Barry and Lisa can’t move him a foot further.

“Oh, Len!” Lisa whimpers, tugging at her brother’s shoulders, trying fruitlessly to get him to the toilet, assuming he’s going to retch. “Barry! W-what if he ODs?”

“ODs?” Barry’s insides do a 180 degree flip, Lisa’s question tightening the knots and throwing the butterflies into a frenzy. Barry didn’t take Len for a guy who did drugs, not considering his diligent work outs and how he took care of his body. Sure, he had a beer every now and then, but he didn’t drink anything stronger than that, and definitely not to the point of drunkenness. But again, that’s as far as Barry _knows_. Even with as long as Barry could consider the two of them friends, he has to admit, he didn’t really start knowing Len until recently. “Wh-what did he take?”

Before Lisa can answer, Len roars, spine curling as he presses himself into a tight ball, a sound like nothing Barry has ever heard Len make coming from his mouth. Lisa covers her mouth with her hands and bursts into tears.

“I don’t know!” Lisa cries, tears sticky on her cheeks, new ones rushing over the old, her nose dripping down her upper lip. “M-my dad brought them home. Swiped them from some house they robbed today.” And with that, the butterflies were knocked stone cold dead. Robbed a house? And Len was there? Len robbed a house with his father? Barry had some suspicions that Lewis Snart was involving his kids in shady dealings, but he didn’t know he was turning Len into a _criminal_. From the things Barry has heard, it wouldn’t be beyond the scope of Lewis Snart, but why would Len go along with it? Barry knew about the abuse, but he doesn’t understand. It baffles him for all of half a second until Lisa continues. “He…he wanted _me_ to take them. He said he wanted to see what they did. But Len took ‘em instead. A few hours went by and nothing. My dad went downstairs to watch TV. I think he checked in on Len a few times, and then after that, he…he gave up and left, but then…I don’t know. Len stumbled to my room. Said we needed to get help, that he wanted me to bring him here. We hitched a ride, but halfway over, he started screaming, clawing at his throat like it was burning, and the guy kicked us out of his car. And now…I-I think he’s seeing stuff! I don’t know, I don’t know! I don’t know what to do!”

“Well, we…we…we’ve gotta get him to a doctor!” Barry insists. “We’ve got to take him to a hospital!” He puts an arm around Len’s shoulders when Len stops screaming and starts sobbing. “Come on, Len,” he urges. “Let’s get you up. I’ll call a cab and…”

“No!” Lisa grabs Barry’s arm, digging her nails into his bicep hard enough to hurt. “No, you can’t! Please! They’re gonna take him away! Like last time! I just know it!”

Barry looks up at Lisa, confusion crimping his brow.

“What do you mean like last time? What…”

Barry doesn’t finish his question, cut short by a new wave of sobs choking Len one after the other, furiously wringing the breath out of him.

“Y-y-you’re smart with all that chemistry and science stuff,” Lisa begs. “Can’t you come up with something!?”

“I…” The blood drains from Barry’s face and pools in his stomach, making him feel hot and cold and on the verge of blacking out all at once. “Not if I don’t know what he took! I don’t know if I should give him charcoal, or water, or milk! If I choose the wrong thing, then I could…” Barry quits explaining when his boyfriend’s body shudders so hard, he thinks Len’s arms and legs will come loose at the joints. Len’s head snaps up, his eyes shifting wildly left and right as if he’s watching something unseen to Barry and Lisa coming for him. He jerks, shimmying backward on his knees. His mouth open, he tries to scream, his body tensing with it till Barry can see every muscle cut his flesh, every bone outlined underneath grey-tinged skin. The hot-cold soup drops from Barry’s stomach to his feet. Time speeds, moving too fast, sweeping away seconds, never to return – time that Len doesn’t have before things go from terrible to catastrophic.

“Barry!” Lisa wails like her heart is being torn out, her throat burned, her stomach ripped open. “Barry, _please_!!”

Without taking another second to consider his options, options he doesn’t really have anyway, Barry shoves two fingers into Len’s gaping mouth and down his throat.

***

Barry walks down the staircase from his bedroom, freshly showered, hair damp, navy thermal Henley clinging to the moisture on his skin. Lisa watches him from the sofa where she’s curled beside the arm, a pillow smothered against her chest, a chenille throw across her legs to stop her from shaking.

If she was shaking from the cold, it might work.

“H-how’s he doing?”

“I got him cleaned up best I could,” Barry says. After Len had emptied the contents of his stomach all over Barry’s clothes and the bathroom floor, he couldn’t stand on his own two feet, so Barry didn’t want to risk giving him a shower. He used pretty much every towel in the house - and every wash cloth, too - to cover the floor and give Len a quick sponge bath. He had to remove Len’s clothes, including his underwear, and replace them with old clothes of Joe’s since there was no way Len’s limbs would fit into anything Barry owned. Barry tried not to gawk, but there was one thing he couldn’t help staring at.

The bruises. The old welts. The fading black-and-blues.

Barry had wondered why recently Len wouldn’t take off his shirt when they made out, why he opted to be shirts instead of skins on the basketball court, why he had turned down an offer to swim at the indoor community pool to join Barry bowling instead.

What in the hell had Len done to make his father think he deserved this?

What did Len _refuse_ to do?

Sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, Barry looks at Lisa, dressed in a grey, zipper-front sweatshirt with a rose pink tank top underneath, the shoulder of her sweatshirt sliding an inch to reveal relatively unblemished skin, and Barry can’t help but wonder…

…how many of the marks on Len’s body were originally meant for Lisa? If their father swiped those pills for Lisa to take and Len took them to save her, how many times did he take a beating that wasn’t his?

It isn’t a question that Barry needs the answer to right now.

“He’s in my bed,” Barry says, rolling his sleeves down his arms. It took more strength and adrenaline than Barry thought he had in his body to get Len there, but somehow he managed it. He’ll probably feel it later on when he lets himself sleep. “He seems to be resting comfortably now that everything’s more or less out of him. But we’re going to have to keep an eye on him overnight.”

“G-good,” Lisa says, hopeful. “Th-that’s…th-that’s good. C-comfortable is good, right?”

“Yes. Comfortable is good.” Barry smiles sympathetically. He’s holding on to that same thread of hope, that if Len can sleep and give his body time to recover, work what’s left of the medicine through his system, then he’ll be fine.

Before Barry took his shower, he cleaned the downstairs bathroom. It was a necessary evil. If he left the mess till later, the whole room would reek, and there would be no saving the towels. He’d have to pitch them and buy new. Barry didn’t want to admit to doing a thorough examination of his boyfriend’s stomach contents, but anything he could find that might point the way to identifying those pills could help Barry anticipate possible side effects or dangerous interactions. Forensics has been a passion of Barry’s ever since his mother died, and he was confident in his ability to put what he’d learned into practice. In the course of mopping up the mess, Barry couldn’t find any remains of the pills Lisa said that Len took, which meant they’d been digested, but he did find evidence to suggest that Len had attempted to retard their absorption. If Barry was right, Len may have drunk an entire bottle of olive oil, eaten a sleeve of crackers, and ingested a substance that gave off the vague odor of meat tenderizer. If that’s the case, they might still have a chance of getting through this without any outside help, but Barry isn’t ruling it out.

They’d have to play the waiting game and hope for the best.

Barry prays that he didn’t do more harm than good by forcing Len to vomit the way he did, but he panicked. He didn’t know what to do. The second Len looked up at him, eyes pleading, black pupils hollow with pain, Barry’s rationale left him. He’d acted on impulse to save his boyfriend.

Barry isn’t usually the type of person to take risks. He measures eight times and cuts once, but only if he has three extra to spare. With any luck, karma from playing it safe previously will pay off with this one uncalculated risk.

As soon as he can, he’s planning on Googling the most commonly prescribed medications with the side effects Len had been presenting…with a secret side trip into the CCPD database using the dummy password he’d developed and his phony IP address to see if there are any reports of a robbery taking place this afternoon.

He doesn’t tell Lisa his plans, and maybe that’s wrong, playing with another person’s fate too much when they don’t want the authorities involved, but he doesn’t feel that Len and Lisa are seeing the big picture. Someone has to do something to help them, someone with more power and knowledge in this area than Barry. Those marks on Len’s body, a father initiating his son into a life of crime, willing to fill his kids up with potentially dangerous drugs just for the hell of it…that can’t continue.

Barry can’t make it stop, but he knows people who can.

Barry doesn’t want to lose Len, but he’s willing to jeopardize their relationship by prying if the end result is the abuse stops.

They hear a buzzing Barry can’t place, but which Lisa seems to recognize immediately, and she pats her pockets in search of it. She pulls her phone out and unlocks the screen. Barry watches her eyes closely as she reads the number.

Open-mouthed, bug-eyed horror overtakes her face instantaneously.

“It’s…it’s my dad!” she exclaims, whispering as if he might hear her.

“Let it go to voicemail?” Barry asks, even though he knows that’s not the answer.

“I…I can’t,” she says, fumbling to answer the call. “I-i-if I do, then he might… _Hey_. Dad. What’s up?”

“Lisa…” The same gruff voice that called for Len that afternoon answers, sounding more threatening than before, if that’s possible. “Where are you guys? I came back from the bar and you two were gone.”

In between his words, Barry hears an urgency, a desperation, layered above the sound of slamming doors and rapid arguing.

“Oh, uh…” Without thinking, Lisa takes Barry’s hand, the way she would have taken Len’s, Barry thinks. So he holds on tight for her, trying to give her an ounce of the strength Len would have to give. “L-len couldn’t sleep. You know, all wired from last night. A-and we remembered that we have this huge assignment due on Monday.” She looks at Barry, as if she can’t believe she just said that, and he mouths the word _science_. “A science assignment,” she clarifies. “A-and it’s worth half our grade.” Lewis stays silent on the opposite end of the line, the absence of his reply amplified by the chaos ensuing behind him. Lisa’s lower lip wobbles. She’s scared that her father doesn’t believe her. Her eyes unfocus, picturing what he’ll do to them if he doesn’t.

“Iris’s dad said we could come over and work on it,” she adds, disintegrating inside waiting for her father’s ruling. “And, you know, s-spend the weekend. You weren’t home so we didn’t think you’d mind.” She squeezes her eyes shut. The whole thing sounds asinine. They walked over to the West House after midnight on a Saturday to work on _homework_? He’s never going to buy that!

Another silence. Barry’s arm shakes with Lisa’s trembling…and a bit of his own.

“Iris?” Barry hears Lewis grunt. “Who’s _Iris_?”

A tear rolls down Lisa’s cheek. She resists the need to sniffle. The West House has always been a safe place for her and Len. Barry doesn’t know what the Snart siblings have told their father about the many times they’ve come over, but it’s obviously not a lot, and she’s caught between saying not enough and a little too much. “I-Iris West? From school? You’ve met her.” _Not true_ , Barry thinks, but this is no time for total disclosure. After all, the man doesn’t seem to understand how homework assignments work, seeing as they’re constantly telling him that Len and Lisa are working on assignments together when they aren’t even in the same grade. Maybe she can pull this one past him. “You saw me eating lunch with her today when you picked up Len.”

More silence, a longer silence. This one paralyzes Barry, as if Lewis Snart were standing right in front of them, eyes boring into them, scrutinizing them, stringing them along since he knows that they’re lying.

“Isn’t her dad a _cop_?” Lewis snaps.

“Y-yeah,” Lisa answers with a sob in her throat. Barry bites the inside of his cheek till the skin splits between his molars. “Yeah, he is.”

Barry watches Lisa fight to keep herself together. She looks so trapped, so helpless, and all Barry wants to do is fix it. Fix it for her and fix it for Len.

“Oh…well,” Lewis says with as much disinterest as any man can have with regard to his own children. “Yeah, you guys stay there. That’s probably the best place for ya right now. There’s some heavy heat over here. Wouldn’t want you…or _your brother_ …to get caught up in it.”

Lisa goes absolutely still. Barry would have believed that she passed out sitting up. She blinks, so Barry knows she’s conscious, but otherwise, she’s unmoving.

“O-okay. Thanks, Dad,” she says, moving only her mouth, wishing that by keeping still her voice would stop shaking. Len is good at bluffing, playing his cards close to his chest, showing no emotion to anyone when the need arises. But she could never master that. And a professional con man like Lewis Snart could read her like a book.

Lewis doesn’t say goodbye to his daughter. He yells an incoherent command and the call disconnects.

“There’s trouble,” she mutters, not to Barry, but to herself, thinking out loud. “Probably from the job tonight, and he…he was going to make Len the scapegoat. I just…I just know it.” Her phone slips from her fingers. It hits the sofa and bounces to the floor. That phone, with its pink furry case she MacGyver-ed so her friends wouldn’t know it was an upscale burner phone and not an actual iPhone like she lets on, and its golden Hello Kitty charm dangling off the corner, is the closest thing to a prized possession Lisa owns, but she doesn’t even look to see where it’s gone.

“Lisa?” Barry scoots closer. Lisa’s hand still in his, he turns her to face him. “What happened tonight? What exactly is going on?”

“He…he was gonna kill me, Barry,” she says. Barry nods. It’s not one hundred percent the answer Barry is looking for, but it’s a start. Barry has too many questions, complicated questions, to expect Lisa to answer them all now. “He was gonna kill me because…because he said he was bored. And Len took the fall for me, the way he always does. And my dad was gonna make Len take the fall for him.” She looks into Barry’s eyes, finally seeing him in front of her. “He…he would have let us die, Barry! Me with a stomach full of pills and Len in a prison cell. H-how do I live with that?”

“I…I don’t…know, Lisa. I just don’t…” Before he can admit that he has no idea how he would deal if his own father did the same thing to him, if Joe did that to him, Lisa turns into Barry’s arms and falls apart.

***

Barry doesn’t have a problem staying at home alone. He’s done it dozens of times. The creak of the wood settling, or the tree outside his window occasionally knocking against the glass, doesn’t bother him the way it did when he was a little kid and he first moved in to the West House. Over the years, he’s come to know all of its noises by heart. They’re a comfort to him more than anything else. They speak to him of safety and family and of every good thing he has. But tonight, with the three of them hiding in it, waiting for the unknown - for Len to take a turn for the worse, or for Lewis Snart to show up on the doorstep, looking for his children, ready to break the door down to get to them - the house becomes eerie in its repose.

Lisa finally settled down, and was camped out on a rollout cot in Barry’s room. She didn’t have to ask for Barry to put her in there. He had no intention of splitting her and Len apart. It seems to be their biggest nightmare on a real life scale, being separated from one another. Besides, better to hide the two of them up in his room with a lock on the door, but also so he doesn’t have to explain _why_ Lisa Snart is over at the house and sleeping on the sofa the second Joe and Iris get home.

With the Snart siblings relatively at ease, all things considered, Barry can’t seem to sit still. He feels oddly on guard – the sole sentinel of a fortress on lock down, with hardened, dangerous criminals lurking outside. He patrols the house several times, checks the locks on the windows in every room, and then on the front door. He considers rolling Joe’s recliner in front of it as a blockade, but that would be even harder to explain than Lisa if Joe and Iris were to come home early…and that’s part of Barry’s conundrum.

Barry knew that Len’s father was abusive. It was difficult to ignore the signs. First and most obvious were the physical – the black eyes, the occasional limps, the swollen lip last year right after the start of school. Len didn’t shy away from an explanation. If anyone asked him where he got them, he’d say outright, “My old man’s an ass,” but Barry assumes most people think he’s being facetious. Lewis is a severe-looking, strict and imposing man, but Len, at 6’ 1” and 170 pounds, most of it pure muscle, is an absolute powerhouse next to him. No one would ever suspect Len of being afraid of his dad.

But very few people know what’s at stake for Len if he sticks up for himself.

After knowing Len for years, Barry is only now learning.

Barry sneaks back into his room after his seventh round. He opens the door slowly, careful not to make a squeak. He sees Lisa first, curled up in the fetal position beneath his spare comforter, the edge of the blanket pulled over her head by hands locked into fists, even in sleep.

Barry can’t imagine what life is like for them, day after day coming home to a house that’s not a home, knowing how volatile their father can be. Barry has tried, but every time he thinks he’s got bad enough nailed down, something worse comes up. Even with everything that’s happened to Barry, he’s never felt anything but safe - with his parents, as well as with Joe and Iris. There was a time when he was afraid that the thing that killed his mother would come back for him. Seeing as no one believed him, no one was searching for it, so it wasn’t in any danger of being caught. But that fear went quickly away, because even though he knew that Joe and Iris had their doubts about Barry’s story, if push came to shove and that thing ever returned, they would do everything in their power to protect him.

But Len and Lisa don’t have that. Lisa has Len to watch over her, but who does Len have?

For the moment, Len has Barry, and Barry isn’t going to let him down.

“Bar…Bar…Barry?” Len whimpers. “Bar-ry? Where…where are…?”

“Shh, I’m here, Len. I’m here.” Barry skates across the floor in his socked feet. He slides left, maneuvering around the head of Lisa’s cot to get to his bed. “Don’t worry. I’m right here.”

“Barry…” Len reaches out a hand. It quivers in the air like a dying autumn leaf, attached to home by barely a filament. “It…it hurts. My stomach…it hurts.”

Barry takes Len’s hand, his fingers closing gently around his cold skin, and slips gingerly into bed with his boyfriend.

“I know it hurts. I know.” Barry hugs Len close. He prays that the soreness is from Len throwing up and not from anything more serious. “That’s why we need to tell someone, Len. That’s why I need you to let me call an ambulance.” Barry drags his fingertips over his boyfriend’s scalp as Len, exhausted and weak, starts trembling all over. “A doctor, or Joe, or the police…they’ll help you, Len. I promise…”

“D-don’t,” Len begs, his voice timid, like that of the little boy Len was a long time ago. “Don’t tell them. Please, Barry? Pl-please…don’t…”

“I know you’re afraid,” Barry says with a _hush_. “I know that you’re afraid they’ll take Lisa away, but…”

“N-no.” Len claws at Barry’s shirt, trying to make him understand, but his hands can’t grab hold. “I don’t want them to take me away from _you,_ Barry. I…I just got you. After all this time, I got you. They can’t take you away from me. Please…don’t let them take you away from me.”

Barry’s throat tightens, but his heart soars.

Barry loves Len. He’s known for a while now that he does, but he thought those feelings had come on too fast. Barry didn’t want to rush anything. Len has been so patient with Barry about so many things, and he didn’t think that Len had anything near those same feelings for him anyway. He didn’t want to ruin what they had by admitting love too soon.

But maybe Len has loved him, too, this whole time?

“I don’t understand,” Barry says, a vast understatement. “Who? Who’s going to take you away?”

“My dad. He’s going to get the police to take me away from you.”

“Len…” Barry massages lightly along Len’s hairline in an attempt to soothe his head. The more Len speaks, the less he makes sense. “I still don’t under…”

“I boosted a car,” Len goes on. “I was gonna run away – me and Lisa. But my dad found out. He found out we were leaving, and he turned me in to the cops to teach me a lesson. I went to juvie. My first night there, I almost got stabbed, but some kid helped me out. The only reason I’m alive is because of him. I…” Len stops mid-thought and shakes his head so frantically that Barry hears his neck crack. “I-I can’t go back, Barry. I’ll never see you again if I do. And I just got you, Barry. So don’t let them take me away from you! Please, don’t!”

Len breaks. He sobs, going limp in Barry’s arms, and Barry, stuck for a solution to Len’s problem, doesn’t know what to do. It had seemed so simple to Barry. Tell Joe. Let the police handle Len’s dad.

But that would mean splitting up Len and Lisa.

Len and Lisa don’t have any other family. No, wait…Barry thinks he remembers Lisa saying something about a grandfather who took care of them when their dad went “away”. But that was quite a while ago, and Barry hasn’t heard about him since, so he wouldn’t be an option. If he was, wouldn’t Len have taken it? Packed up himself and Lisa and gone to wherever their grandfather lived? If they get the police involved, Len and Lisa would probably be shipped off to foster care – Len for less than a year before he aged out, and Lisa for longer. If they managed to get placed with a decent family, they’d still end up separated eventually.

And then there’s the two of them, Len and Barry, starting out in this relationship completely unsure, and now…falling in love?

Maybe Joe would be willing to take them in. It wouldn’t be for long – just a year or two. It would be a tight fit with the five of them, but they had a basement. They could convert it into a bedroom. They could make it work. Joe made it work for Barry. He could make it work for them.

But it’s contingent on whether or not the cops can do anything about their dad. With the stuff he’s already pulled, Barry would think they could. He’s been in and out of Iron Heights, so he has to be on their radar. There has to be some reason why he’s been able to slip by them all these times. Barry doesn’t see Lewis Snart often, but he never seems nervous. It doesn’t seem like he’s hiding.

So how is he getting away with it?

If only Len would let him talk to Joe about it. Maybe there’s a roundabout way he can…

“Barry?” Len whimpers at Barry’s silence. “Barry…please? Please, don’t…”

“I won’t.” Barry cradles Len’s head against his chest as his boyfriend sniffles himself to sleep. “I won’t let them take you away, Len. I promise, I won’t.”

 

 

 


End file.
